Linkages between governance, globalization, and sustainable development : A comparative study of sub-Saharan Africa and East/South-East Asia

Abstract

Since the launch of the Brundtland report in 1987, developing countries continue to face problematic trade-offs that must balance the pursuit of industrialization and economic development, reduce poverty, ensure environmental sustainability, and respect the welfare of future generations. Several contemporary trends warrant the positioning of this study in the academic literature and policy circle. At the policy level, though all regions of the world have made tremendous progress, sub-Saharan African countries remain the region with the worst human development outcomes. Also, air pollution climate change, and global warming have been found to be the major cause of welfare losses in sub-Saharan Africa and many Asian countries. In the literature, several explanations on the causes of poverty and underdevelopment in developing countries have largely focused on how to achieve economic growth. The discussions in these papers have seemingly ignored other national level and global factors that may push developing countries to manage the trade-offs between the natural resource usage today and how to lower the level of harm to its use by future generation. Against this backdrop, this study takes a comparative approach and examines how governance, democracy, and globalization affect sustainable human development in developing countries particularly in sub-Saharan African and East and South-East Asia. A panel data analysis of 56 countries was employed within the period of 25 years from 1990-2015. Pooled/Ordinary Least Squares, fixed effects, instrumental variable in Two stage Least Squares and system Generalized Method of Moments were employed to control for specific characteristics

Several results were established after controlling for confounding factors. First, governance, which is measured by governance effectiveness, control of corruption, and the regulatory quality showed a negative relationship with sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. Second, governance (governance effectiveness, control of corruption, and regulatory quality) has a positive impact on sustainable development of Asian countries. Third, economic and social globalizations exert a negative impact on sustainable development in both regions. Fourth, political globalization has a positive effect on sustainable development of all countries included in the study. Fifth, social globalization has a positive effect on human development among African countries. Sixth, economic and political globalizations showed a negative impact on human development in African. Seventh, the economic, social, and political dimensions of globalization have consistently shown a negative impact on human development among Asian countries. Eighth, whilst democracy index and political rights have a positive effect on sustainable development, but, show no relationship or negatively direct effect on human development in Africa, they were found to be entirely negative for both sustainability and human development among Asian countries. Ninth, press freedom showed a negative effect on development outcomes in the two regions. Tenth, genuine wealth per capita as a measure of sustainability showed a negative impact on human development, suggesting that the current development of the two regions is not on the sustainable path.

Another important finding of this study is that democracy reduces the negative impact of globalization on sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, globalization is likely to facilitate the achievement of sustainable development in the study context if the level of democracy is high. It also means that democracy has the potential of modulating the negative impact of globalization on sustainable development agenda. As such, democracy matters for the extent to which globalization will exert influence on development outcomes in Africa. This is particularly true under the high quality of democracy where access to and flow of information is very high. Hence, citizens will be well-informed about the problems engineered by the current wave of globalization. Among Asian countries, however, our findings revealed that the current status of democracy in the region has no potential of reducing the negative impact of globalization on sustainable development. A number of policy recommendations are offered towards the achievement of sustainable development agenda of the two regions.